For Now Left and Forlorn
by Salomedancing
Summary: For Chin Lee forty years are not enough time to get away from the Master's influence. Two versions of the Master, Delgado!Master and Simms!Master.


**AN: Warning for character death. This is not a happy story. Written for dw_guestfest. I re-watched The Mind of Evil recently and Chin Lee caught my imagination. She is rather unique among the Master's minions, more like a companion than any other, at least until Lucy Saxon. It is clear that being a companion to the Doctor changes the companion's lives, usually for the better. It seemed to me that those who survive serving the Master must be affected by their experience as well, though not in a positive way. Chin Lees disappears halfway through The Mind of Evil after she has been found out and I doubt that the Master ever thought about her again. But I doubt she got away unscathed. The the title and the quote at the end is from the anonymous lyrics to John Downland's song_ Come Again_.**

Captain Chin Lee was told that she had suffered a nervous breakdown, but she remembered little of it. There had been a doctor, true, a tall white-haired man who had asked her a lot of questions. But there had been militaries too, both British and Chinese and a lot of confusion and raised voices. There was the death of her delegate leader and a murder attempt of the American delegate and she was somehow involved with it. It was not difficult to believe that what they said about her mental health was true. She had expected to be sent back to China in disgrace, to prison or possibly death, but somehow she ended up in a psychiatric hospital in England instead. She must have had a friend somewhere, perhaps the white-haired doctor who visited her a few times. His mind nudged against hers, a soft bumbling touch. She could sense he wanted to help and that he grew frustrated when he couldn't.

She wondered a little over what it was he wanted to help her with, but not much. There were things she couldn't remember, pocket of nothingness that hurt her head if she tried focus, but on the whole she remembered very well. She just didn't care about it anymore. She remembered feelings. Passionately discussing politics whole nights, not stopping until dawn. Grieving after the death of her father. A boy she had kissed in the rain and had wanted so much it almost hurt. Joy, anger and love and what had caused it they were all in her memories, but she didn't feel it anymore. Something had burned her mind like acid, leaving large parts inside her bleached blank.

Chin Lee quite liked the hospital. She had followed orders her whole life, and she liked the way the time of the day sorted her actions. After her release she stayed in England, they asked if she wanted to and she said yes. She neither liked nor disliked her new country; it was simply easier to stay. Patriotism was another of those things she could remember that she once had possessed but couldn't understand anymore. A man from UNIT helped her to find a small apartment and a job as a clerk. Four times a year she had to go to a UNIT office so they could stamp a lot of papers and offer her a cup of tea. That was when she had still been young and beautiful, but she grew middle-aged and drab without regrets. Then she grew old and almost invisible, an ageing woman with grey hair and a calm face that no one looked at twice.

She developed her own routines; they soothed her, though from what, Chin Lee didn't know. She worked, shopped for food on her way home, cleaned and then watched television until she could go to bed. She never watched the news, she consumed glossy soap operas depicting a made-up life she didn't yearn for or envied. Weekend and holidays were worse. She took long walks to nowhere in particular and always, always worked extra if she could. Most of her money she sent to her family in China, she needed very little for herself. They were ashamed of her and she had long since stopped writing them letters. She didn't have much to tell them anyway.

There were things that disturbed her, though, even if she couldn't say why. If she met a bearded stranger on the street, she had to cross over to the other side, her heart thumping hard. Cigar smoke made her short of breath, but worst were men wearing black leather gloves. That made her mouth dry out and panic flickered deep inside her, but she couldn't stop staring at the soft blackness. She knew exactly how it would feel against her skin. Supple softness with steel underneath, a touch that would scorch her, leaving her with invisible scars that would never go away.

Sometimes she woke up from dreams were a voice which was low and gentle spoke to her and hurt her to the bones. A voice like the sharpest of knives, searing into her, leaving her completely open for him to take what he wanted. And when she capitulated and lifted her soul to him to devour, he just laughed. And Chin Lees woke up with tears streaming down her face, sitting shivering and abandoned in the dark.

One night, when she changed channels, a face flickered over the screen and she felt a deep unease. Her fingers almost changed back to that channel, but she managed to stop it. Her hands shook when she turned off the TV, and she felt cold and suddenly very alone. Chin Lee saw the face again, all too soon. A smiling youthful face on thousands of posters, all over the city. She tried to avoid them, but they seemed to be everywhere. She slept badly, her nightmares growing stronger and more frequent.

At one of her visit at the UNIT office Chin Lee tried to voice her feelings to the young man who had just stamped her papers.

"That Harold Saxon," she said after hesitating a little. "There is something wrong with him."

"You must be the only one who believes that," he answered with a smile. "I think he is just what Britain needs."

Chin Lee shrugged, unable to express the dread she felt.

Saxon's political meeting was packed, and she stopped just inside the door. She wasn't sure what had driven here to this place, the crowd and noise unfamiliar and familiar at the same time. She had not had a thought about politics for a long time. Swallowed by the throng she was pushed in different directions and without wanting to, she was suddenly in the front row. She looked up at him and he returned her gaze, knowing her. How could he be so different but still the same? He smiled at her and Chin Lee's heart opened and she was alive again. Love, desire, fear and hatred blossomed inside her; she had forgotten how it felt to feel and how painful it was.

_My soul is yours._

Overwhelmed Chin Lee fainted and woke up surrounded by concerned faces. She felt sick and confused, someone helped her into a chair, someone else asked her how she was feeling and then the crowd parted and he stood there. He leaned down over her, murmuring concerned words for the crowd to eat. Beside him his pretty doll-wife smiled and smiled, but Chin Lee could see that she was screaming in silence behind that brittle smile. She could hear her own mind scream as well and she shrank back in the chair in terror. He took her hand, cool leather against heated skin and he spoke, words only she could hear.

"Well met, Captain Lee."

But before she could answer he was gone, and she was left, discarded once again and with a terrible yearning inside her. Strangers continued to fuss over her, offering her tea, or a ride home, but she fended them off and left unaccompanied.

"I want to go home", she thought. A wave of homesickness for the village she had grown up in rose inside her. The smell, how the wind have felt against her face and people speaking in a dialect that pleased the ear. She had been empty for nearly forty years in a country she didn't belong to, breathing, sleeping and eating, but not living. But she could not go back.

And what was there to go forward to? She could become a foot soldier, one of those bright eyed people with `Vote Saxon` badges, working relentlessly to further his cause. Chin Less closed her eyes in pain. Those people were marching into a future that they believed would be a better one and only she knew that he was going to make the world burn.

Chin Lee had walked without aim and now she found herself at the docks. The black water glittered in reflecting light, deep and cool. She had never learned to swim and always regarded the sea with suspicion, but now it seemed to beckon at her with a promise of peace. It was surprisingly easy to take a few running steps and fling herself into the water.

The dock hand who saw her told the police it was never any chance, at the time he had reached the place where she jumped, there was nothing to see. Chin Lee had slipped away, almost as un-noticed as she had lived.

_Come again! that I may cease to mourn  
Through thy unkind disdain;  
For now left and forlorn  
I sit, I sigh, I weep, I faint, I die  
In deadly pain and endless misery._


End file.
